Thursday, June 15th • 6:30 pm – 8 pm
Women were the first computers—but maleness has dominated the internet age. So I was pleased to discover the Cyberfeminism Index, an internet library elevating deep cuts that might otherwise be lost in content overload. This ever-expanding compendium of over 700 short entries catalogs three decades of online activism and net art published by hackers, scholars, artists, and activists taking up (cyber)space since the beginning. (The oldest entry is from 1985!) Krista Wong’s 2000s-era project Big Bad Chinese Mama is a fake mail-order bride website. In 2001, Keith Obadike attempted to sell his Blackness on Ebay. Anyone can access this rich internet history and download free, customizable PDF readers.
The Index is now published as a book, and urban arts org Space.City is hosting a launch event with the editor, NYC-based designer and technologist Mindy Seu. I spoke to Seu about one big impact of the print version: While the online site is a living index, the printed version acts like a virus. “We’re taking all of these grassroots, subversive things and injecting them into a space [like the Library of Congress] where they haven’t been acknowledged [before].”
A panel discussion with University of Washington professors Kemi Adeyemi and Anna Lauren Hoffmann will follow an augmented-reality performative reading. Come prepared to consider how bodies exist in multiple forms. “The digital self, IRL, and what creates a body of knowledge…early cyberfeminists responded to the impact of technology on our bodies and vice versa. You don’t drop [social conditioning] because you’re entering cyberspace.”
Books will be available for purchase. Stay a while and get it signed. Tickets are $25. A reception will follow at Locust Cider in First Hill.
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